Working on this was a nightmare. I hope the official localizers burn in hell.
The scripts were full of BS, it took 5-6 hours to edit each episode. Basically we had to retranslate almost every single line of the dialogues. And here we thought garbage localizations were something that died since the early 2000's.
I've looked into 'normie' Anime forums, and it's been somewhat distressing seeing those who're dependent on the paysubs are absolutely not getting into UY because everything good about the show was being erased, especially all the ideas that became the tropes/cliches/memes/concepts that made up Anime Fandom thereafter.
"hurr it just a really bad RomCom lol how did those back in the 80s think this was any good.."
@ cjb do you have examples of where "everything good about the show was being erased, especially all the ideas that became the tropes/cliches/memes/concepts that made up Anime Fandom thereafter" occurs in the HIDIVE subtitles? I have watched the original show, and did not find anything missing in terms of the subs for stories there were also covered in the 80s show. I chose to go with the HIDIVE script for my project because, if anything, I think it is the most spiritually faithful translation to date. UY is a true-to-heart and simple slapstick comedy. It's full with puns and jokes that are, first and foremost, supposed to be funny. They should be translated in a way that is funny, while obviously not straying too far in meaning. Localising it is a constant exercise in finding the appropriate ways to make it funny w.r.t. characterisation, tone, attitude, as well as the relationship of speaker and recipient. Just mirroring japanese sentence structures and looking up the first or second alternative on jisho is not the way. Again, that being said, if you found several such egregious instances please do tell, maybe I have missed them despite familiarity with the material, and can fix it for my release as well. Just like the handful easy-to-miss typos in every single HIDIVE episode, as well as the dozens of CPS 35-50 lines that were an absolute pain to fix.
Also let's be real here, the only existing translation of the UY anime before this reboot is absolutely atrocious, the quality of the subtitles was not a factor for forming the english-language cult fanbase it has, and neither is it the reason that people now may not enjoy the reboot. It's just not for them, they do not find the humour fun, and that is fine. Everyone doesn't have to like everything you or I like, there's really no use in coping with BS like it being the fault of the official subtitles.
The HIDIVE subtitles for Urusei Yatsura were dogshit. But man this isn't much better. It tries WAY TOO HARD to be as "Japanese-accurate" as possible. Why TF does every Lum sentence need to end with "Cha?". It doesn't read/sound natural at all. And all of the dialogue feel like direct translations of the Japanese script. You just translated it. It's not the same as localization.
Bilibili subs are like a middle-ground between HIDIVE's over-localization and Rom and Rem's Japantranslation. Though it has some grammatical errors.
excellent work
most of these modern day anime watchers are a bunch of morons
back in the day fansubbers did so much better jobs
you never ever localize anime....the translation should be as close as possible to the original words...while still making the grammar make sense
if you need to add tl notes to the sub for something to make sense....thats what you do
Comments - 18
cjb
WitchyMary
peanutbutt69
Gnome
cosmic
Tsukudakobashi
Aergia
cjb
Interruptor
3du-54n
ts92
Aryma
AttackonTitanSucksAss
Interruptor
Aryma
AttackonTitanSucksAss
techguru
techguru